charityn.

Etymology: Two early types of this word appear in English: (1) cariteð , -teþ , (2) charité ; these are adoptions respectively of Old Northern French caritedh , -tet(þ) , (later, and modern Picard carité ), and the somewhat later central Old French charité (earlier charitet ); which correspond to Provençal caritat , Spanish caridad , Italian carità , semi-popular adaptations of Latin cāritāt-em in its theological sense. In truly popular use Latin cāritāt-em had already become, through popular Latin *cartāt-em , Provençal cartat , Old Northern French kierté , Old French chierté , modern French cherté . But this had the general Latin senses of ‘dearness (high price), fondness, affection’, as well as those belonging specially to New Testament and Christian use; subsequently, to indicate the latter more distinctly, the Latin word, familiar in the language of the church, passed anew into popular use, and undergoing (from its later date) less phonetic change, gave caritat , caritet , charitet , charité . Mixture of the two forms gave the type cherité , and, in English at least, the two words were not kept altogether distinct in use. See cherte n.The Greek word for ‘love’ in the New Testament (occasionally also in the Septuagint) is ἀγάπη , from root of verb ἀγαπᾶν ‘to treat with affectionate regard’, ‘to love’; in the Vulgate, ἀγάπη is sometimes rendered by dilectio (noun of action < diligere to esteem highly, love), but most frequently by caritas , ‘dearness, love founded on esteem’ (never by amor ). Wyclif and the Rhemish version regularly rendered the Vulgate dilectio by ‘love’, caritas by ‘charity’. But the 16th cent. English versions from Tyndale to 1611, while rendering ἀγάπη sometimes ‘love’, sometimes ‘charity’, did not follow the dilectio and caritas of the Vulgate, but used ‘love’ more often (about 86 times), confining ‘charity’ to 26 passages in the Pauline and certain of the Catholic Epistles (not in 1 John), and the Apocalypse, where the sense is specifically 1c below. In the Revised Version 1881, ‘love’ has been substituted in all these instances, so that it now stands as the uniform rendering of ἀγάπη, to the elimination of the distinction of dilectio and caritas introduced by the Vulgate, and of ‘love’ and ‘charity’ of the 16th cent. versions.